Greetings, dear visitor of this thread. Nearly six months ago, I set out on an endeavour to do what I thought nobody had done before me. Near the end of development, I was proven wrong though. There is one more fangame like this one. But this didn't discourage me, I kept going because I didn't want to dump all my efforts and everything I had achieved into the trash can. So I made it stand out as much as I could. Ladies and gentlepeople, I am proud to present a project that essentially changed my view of life, believe it or not. I present to you...
(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/041evtyzi84mea8/HRtPlogo.png)
Touhou Henkaden ~ Highly Responsive to Pancakes (lit. Eastern Strange Pastry Tale) is a fangame made in Danmakufu ph3 that aims to recreate the playstyle of the very first Touhou game, Highly Responsive to Prayers while still being different enough to be considered its own game. Let me begin with the most basic features of this game.
- Three different playable characters, each with their own benefits and drawbacks!
- Three selectable routes for the main scenario: venture to the Netherworld, Hell or Heaven to confront the causer of the incident!
- An extra scenario that can be unlocked by clearing the main scenario with all characers!
- A seperate "Endless Mode" to chase your own highscores!
- The ability to script your very own stages and scenarios and play them directly inside HRtPancakes through Stage Pack mode!
Lots of pancakes!
How to play:
HRtPancakes plays similar to regular ol' HRtPrayers, with a couple differences.
You control your character with the arrow keys, and you can slow down movement by pressing SHIFT. Pressing Z will allow you to fire a single shot, pressing X will make your character sweep the space in front of them. The ball can be maneuvered by shooting it or by sweeping it if it's close enough. Due to HRtPancakes being more focused on the bullet hell aspect of Touhou, your own balls can't kill you any longer. Pressing C will cause you to use a bomb, which can clear out bullets and turn over panels.
Lives and bombs are gained through grazing and scoring, respectively. A life is awarded every 300 (200 for Reimu) graze points. A bomb is awarded either by dying, or every 250.000 (125.000 for Reimu) score points. You can carry infinite extra lives, but only up to 8 bombs.
Your own shots and your sweep can cancel out enemy bullets. However, not all bullets can be destroyed, only small ones, dots, pellets, arrowheads etc.
The playable characters:
- Reimu Hakurei: Reimu has average speed, a regular shot, her bomb hits about everything on the screen. She also gains lives and bombs faster than other characters.
- Marisa Kirisame: Marisa is a fast character with a shot that covers a greater area, but her bomb has a fixed cross pattern.
- Sakuya Izayoi: Sakuya is faster than Reimu, but slower than Marisa. She has a regular shot and her bomb can damage bosses.
The different modes:
- Normal Mode: This is the main scenario. After the first five stages, you can choose to go to either Hakugyokurou, Chireiden or Heaven for the last ten stages.
- Extra Mode: Extra Mode can be unlocked by getting the good ending in the main scenario with all characters. The route you take doesn't matter. Unlike the main scenario, the extra scenario consists of only ten as opposed to fifteen stages.
- Endless Mode: In Endless Mode, your lives and bombs are taken away from you. Swarms of Yin-Yang enemies will attack you nonstop until you make a mistake. Sometimes, SinGyoku will appear on the battlefield as well. Destroying them will clear all bullets that are currently on screen.
- Stage Packs: Here, you can choose to play custom stages made by either you, or other people. HRtPancakes has full support for complete custom scenarios and players. A sample Reisen player, as well as a sample scenario that are both only accessible in Stage Pack Mode are provided in the download.
That's basically it for HRtPancakes. I hope you will enjoy this game. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post them here. I'll gladly help you out. Same goes for bug reports of course. If you're going to submit a bug report, please tell me where the bug occurred (stage 8 on route B, Endless Mode, title screen etc.) and of course, what happened (error, glitch etc.).
As for Stage Packs, I'm probably going to publish some sort of documentation on how exactly they work soon, and how to make your very own HRtPancakes.
Was there anything else...? Oh right, the download link to my magnificent work, and of course, some screenshots!
Download Highly Responsive to Pancakes! (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B84Zngfyqq0tVUd2TnU5STVwZWM/view?usp=sharing)
Screenshot #1 (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/fehq29c7yd1apj9/HRtP1.png)
Screenshot #2 (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/iw5r1aaoapu0gm0/HRtP2.png)
Screenshot #3 (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/9yavuwsjejtuw9m/HRtP3.png)
Screenshot #4 (http://i.imgur.com/TNoqxqf.png)
And of course, the credits. Do note, that throughout its development, HRtPancakes became an absurd Gordian knot of code that I myself couldn't comprehend after a while, especially since I rarely ever comment anything for some reason. That's why there's still code and libraries borrowed from other people. Its system was also built before my custom system, so that's why there are no bullet delete effects etc.
- ZUN - Sounds, graphics, Touhou as a whole
- Tasogare Frontier - Sounds, graphics
- TalosMistake - Revamped physics
- dairi - Graphics
- GTBot - Cutin functions
- Ozzy/ExPorygon - Effects, dialogue functions
- Jake/ultimadragon, Pikmin H - Playtesting
Not a bad game, and I was enjoying it for the most part until I got to one of the final boss fights when one of the game's bigger flaws becomes a bit bothersome--the lack of a "kicking" attack like in the original HrtP game. This makes it extremely difficult to get the ball off the ground when it's stopped bouncing and is basically just reduced to a roll. When you throw in the chaotic danmaku patterns the late-stage bosses use, gameplay basically just devolves into desperately smashing the X key to try to get the darn ball in the air while avoiding danmaku. This leads to the battles being much more drawn out than they ought to be. In addition, the shot the player can fire to influence the ball's trajectory only seems to work half the time. The rest of the time it'll hit the ball but do nothing to the ball's trajectory.
Also, you may want to work on the background music-looping. It was a bit jarring at times. As for the stage danmaku, I feel it fluctuates a bit too much in difficulty. I actually felt that some later stages were significantly easier than earlier ones. In particular the stages where the tiles would only shoot a single, large, slow-moving bullet. Oh, and did you make the sound effect for gaining a new life and a new bomb the same? Because I heard the "extend" sound effect several times, but I only saw the life counter actually go up a fraction of the time. In the heat of battle, I often didn't have time to look up to see the "EXTEND!" text, so differentiating the sound effects would be a helpful touch I think. The "EXTEND!" sound effect is practically Pavlovian to any Touhou fan. Don't taunt me with it when I'm not actually receiving an extra life ;_;
Ahhh, but negative ranty stuff aside, the game looks nicely put together, and the physics on the ball and stage obstacles were well done. I really was having quite a lot of fun. :) Boss danmaku was par for the course. I would have suggested having the boss use "spells" as their health got lower, but you mix up their attack phase with a pretty large variety of danmaku, so I say that works just fine too! I was also quite amused by your inclusion of the infamous "HARRY UP!" Really the only thing that kinda put a damper on my enjoyment was the aforementioned lack of a kicking option. If you could implement a solution to that, I think this game could really be great. If not, maybe you could at least have the player bomb throw the ball up into the air randomly? Whenever I bombed (especially during a boss fight), it was so I could get my bearings together. When the ball was rolling, this would often be so I could buy myself some time to try in vain to get the ball in the air again before the boss danmaku would resume. Having the bomb do that for you would be a nice touch if you can't implement "kicking."
I haven't played the game that much yet, but I'm pretty sure it's safe to assume that Yukari's gonna be the Extra Boss. Goddammit Yukari x)
Ahh, and I don't know if you were taking a cue from my Yakumo Ball script when you put the ball hitbox indicator around the players, but it was a nice touch. ;)
EDIT: A few more things I'd like to add. One, I think you should extend the player's invincibility frames a little bit longer after bombing. As it is now, I can still get killed while the bomb is just finishing and I"m still trying to re-gather my bearings. Also, I seem to have stumbled on a glitch. I beat Utsuho
for the first time, who was also the first final boss I defeated, and I suddenly unlocked the bonus stage with Yukari
. I'm guessing this wasn't intended since you wanted the player to beat all the final bosses before reaching that stage, I'm assuming?